Just a Nightmare
by chatnoir06
Summary: Oneshot. Mark catches the flu and suffers a freakish nightmare that involves neither a cow named Elsie or diet coke.


**Author's Note: Stick with this one till the end. You'll probably get it, but I don't want it to seem like it's too weird or anything. Does this ever happen to anyone when you get really sick? Those weird delusional dreams? Man, they're freaky. **

I usually didn't catch colds very easily. If I did, I would try to spend as most time as I could out of the loft and away from Roger—bringing any kind of airborne germs into the loft was obviously a bad idea. So, I would stay with Maureen and Joanne until it curbed, or Roger would sleep at Mimi's—a practice which was not uncommon anyway—while I locked myself in my room. It sucked, but it was basically the only way to deal with it.

This time, it was late in the fall, flu season. Despite getting a flu shot at the local free clinic, I managed to get myself sick with some strand of it. For three days I lay on the couch in Joanne's lush apartment, sleeping away a fever buried under several quilts; drinking the tasteless tea that Maureen would kindly make for me; running to the bathroom to throw up occasionally. I hadn't been that sickly for a long time.

But after the fever broke, Joanne figured that any communicable germs were long gone—she and Maureen had been spared anything that I might have given them. She figured it would be safe for me to go home again.

Achy, stuffed up and still suffering a cough, I trudged home to the loft. It felt like forever just to get up the stairs.

Upon sliding open the heavy door, I found Roger on the couch, picking at his guitar in a very bored manner. He looked up when he heard the door open.

"You're back! Welcome home!" he said, setting down his guitar and standing up. "You look like shit."

"Thanks." I said hoarsely. "Feel like it, too."

"Should I stay at Mimi's tonight?" Roger asked.

"I think it's okay." I said as I moved past him to my bedroom. "Joanne said I was safe to come home after my fever went away, and I haven't puked since yesterday afternoon."

I glanced at Roger. He wrinkled his nose and murmured, "Ew." It made me crack a smile.

"But I'm just gonna crash anyway." I continued.

"Do you want anything?" I heard Roger ask. "I think we have some crackers…"

I stripped off my coat and my scarf, throwing them on the floor. My camera was sitting on my bedside table dejectedly. "No, don't worry. Maureen kept me well-fed."

"I should hang out at Joanne's apartment more often." Roger quipped.

I sat on the edge of my bed and kicked off my shoes and then took off my glasses, dropping them next to my camera. Then I crawled under the blankets, piling them around me so that I was a veritable sickly cocoon.

But I realized my door was still open. I groaned.

"Roger?"

He appeared at my door. "Yeah?"

"Could you close my door?" I asked quietly, pitifully. It was like I was a kid all over again, calling for Mom to tuck me in when I was home sick with the flu. I smiled at myself. Roger grinned.

"Sure. Have a good nap."

I nodded my thanks, and Roger closed the door. I turned over, shoved my face into my pillow, and fell asleep.

Despite having broken my fever hours ago, my sleep was still fitful and slightly delusional. I kept having odd, freeze-frame dreams that lasted only seconds, after which I would wake up, brace myself through a bout of coughing, and then pass out again.

So it must have been pretty late in the night when I woke up and looked around my room. It was dark. My head was pounding and I felt very hot. I sat up and pushed the mountain of blankets off of my chest, which helped.

I heard something out in the living room.

I paused and listened. Roger wouldn't be up this late. He always crashed well before midnight and stayed in his room till nine or ten the next morning. I had a fleeting thought that it could be Mimi, but why on earth would she be in our apartment at two in the morning?

I got up and went to my door, then cracked it open and looked out into the living room. Given the amount of city lights that would pour into the wide windows of the loft, it was never dark in the living room.

Therefore, I could very easily see someone standing in the living room by the door. But—it was odd—they seemed more concealed in the shadows than everything else in the room. They were much darker than they should have been. The door was open, and as if they sensed the sound of my door opening, they crouched, looked around, and then made to flee out the door. Even without wearing my glasses, I could see that they were holding something.

How did someone get into the loft? We had never ever had a break-in.

"Shit!" I said immediately, and started running after them; blind and sock-footed. "Roger!" I yelled. "Roger, get up!"

I slid to a stop in the door frame and looked out. The intruder was running up the stairs to the roof. Still, they seemed way too dark to be…well, real.

I looked back into the loft again. "_Roger!_" And then ran out to the stairs. I followed the intruder up onto the roof.

When I pushed open the door, I looked about. I could hear the city buzzing around me, even so early in the morning. The moon was shining down right on the imposter, who was standing by the ledge of the roof. Whatever he had stolen out of the loft, he was holding over the edge.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Who the fuck do you think you are?" I started walking towards them.

Suddenly, I could see what the intruder was holding over the edge of the roof: my camera.

_What the fuck?_

How did he get that? My camera was sitting right beside my bed when I went to sleep. I couldn't have slept through someone breaking into my bedroom.

"Hey! Don't drop that." I said, approaching. The whole situation was disconcerting. I couldn't see the intruder, they were just…dark. A dark shape.

A very odd feeling came over me.

But then, before I could say anything else, the intruder dropped the camera. Involuntarily I lurched forward, tripped, and—fell.

Falling, fallingScreaming at the top of my lungs as I fell.

And then—

I woke up.

For a few seconds I couldn't figure out where I was. It was so dark I couldn't see a thing. But—oh, fuck, my arms hurt. I thrashed about, feeling constricted as though something were wrapped around my legs. I realized that, right before coming to my senses, I had been screaming. Or maybe not screaming, but some sort of strangled noise was coming out of my mouth.

Suddenly, the light came on. I squinted my eyes shut and tried to turn around.

"Mark?" It was Roger. "Are you okay?"

I flopped myself onto my back and sat up. Finally, things were coming together. I was on the floor of my bedroom. I had fallen out of bed. My blankets were wrapped around my legs.

I reached up to the table and put on my glasses, realizing in the process that both of my elbows were bleeding.

"Wow." I murmured, looking at the scrapes.

"You were screaming like…like, I don't know, it sounded painful though." Roger said.

"Just a nightmare." I said as I wiped the sweat from my forehead.

"Must have been one hell of a nightmare." Roger replied.

I looked up at him. "It was weird!" I said quietly.

"Here, before you tell me about it…let's get those cleaned up." Roger said. He reached down and pulled me up. On my feet, I felt dizzy, but more clear-headed than I had been when I returned to the loft earlier that day. I disengaged myself from the blankets around my legs and went out into the kitchen with Roger.

While I pressed a wet paper towel to both of my elbows in turn, I recounted the bizarre dream about the shadowy person in our living room who stole my camera and threw it over the roof with me along with it.

"That's just fucked up." Roger said when I was finished.

"I know!" I replied. "That's what I get for being sick."

Roger turned off the light hanging over the table and made his way back to his bedroom. "Well, if you don't mind, I'm going back to sleep, and you should too. Just—hey—no screaming this time, okay? You scared the fuck out of me."

I looked at him, smiled and laughed. "Okay. See you in the morning."

"Yeah." Roger said, and disappeared into his room.

I wandered into the bathroom and managed to find two band-aids to put over my elbows. I splashed some water on my face and then returned to my bed. I fell asleep after a while, and this time, it was a peaceful sleep.


End file.
